Reviewed by Carol Sullivan
Genre: Horror
Rating: Not Rated
Director: Scott Reynolds
Starring: Paolo Rotondo, Paul Glover, Chris Graham, Darien Takle, Rebecca Hobbs
On DVD: December 8th, 1998
Studio: TriMark Pictures
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No matter how many movies I watch, (which is a lot, folks) every once in a while a really good one slips past my radar. The gritty psychological thriller, The Ugly, was one of them. Written and Directed by Scott Reynolds back in 1997, this New Zealand sleeper is a low-budget masterpiece. The Ugly really shows us what can be done with a great vision and a couple of bucks...
The beginning of the movie has a definite Silence of the Lambs feel to it as we meet a beautiful young psychiatrist named Dr. Shumacher (Rebecca Hobbs). A psyche patient named Simon (Paolo Rotondo) has personally requested that she come and evaluate him before his criminal trial begins. You see, Simon viciously slaughtered a dozen people with no apparent reason or pattern.
After you get past the over-acted characters that are the hospital's security guards, we get to meet Simon. Soft-spoken, handsome and very young, Simon appears boyish and non-threatening, though he is chained to a chair. When Dr. Shumacher makes her entrance, the game has begun and we wonder if Simon is innocent or is the proverbial cat toying with a mouse. As his story unfolds we, along with the Doctor, begin to wonder if Simon was driven to killing by his childhood and can be saved, or is he truly a psychopathic killer.
The Ugly is a head-long leap into story-telling the way it should be done in a film. The Director blended a fascinating mix of past and present. Simon's memories play in real-time as the Doctor's interview progresses; so the viewer is sucked into Simon's fantasy world of pain and memories. We are torn by being repulsed at his savage behavior and feeling bad for this young man.
I liked the way that the filmmakers made the blood in this movie an un-real shade of inky black. Brilliantly conceived, this small touch suggests that Simon's memories are warped or perhaps made-up altogether. And as the Doctor's character gets pulled into to his delusions, we begin to wonder just how dangerous it would be to be in the mind of a serial killer... The question being: "Is he in my head as well?"
The Ugly, a well-crafted and well-written thriller is a dark treat well worth a rental and/or purchase.
Overall Rating: 4
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 16 September 2010 11:05 )
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